With many different elements of SEO, it is essential to ensure that your site is optimized for technical aspects. There are a few pretty obvious signs that will help to determine if your site is well-optimized or not. Keep reading to learn more about technical SEO to understand where your website ranks and why:
What is Technical SEO, and Why is it Important?
First off, it is crucial to understand what technical SEO refers to and why it’s essential. Did you know that improving the technical aspects of your website will help increase where it ranks on search engines? This is the foundation of technical SEO. Making your site faster, easier to crawl, and specifically easier to understand for search engines are the pillars of technical optimization.
Search engines want to present their browsers with the best results for their search queries. Google’s bots will crawl and evaluate all web pages on multiple factors. These factors include how fast the page loads, how easy it is to determine what the page is about, etc. Improving technical aspects will help search engines crawl and understand your site better. With this in mind, it will also work the other way around. If you make severe technical mistakes on your site, it can negatively affect your website. Accidents happen – you wouldn’t be the first to block search engines from crawling your site by accident.
Characteristics of a Technically Optimized Site
It’s a misconception that the technical details of your website are designed to please search engines. Your website should be fast, straightforward, and easy to use so that users aren’t discouraged from staying on your site. Creating a robust technical foundation coincides with a better experience for users and search engines. A technically sound website is fast for users and easy to crawl for search engines. Here are some essential characteristics of a technically optimized website.
Is it fast?
There’s nothing worse than a slow website that takes too long to load. Did you know that more than half of mobile users leave a website if it doesn’t load after 3 seconds? There are thousands of websites for each service to choose from; if your website doesn’t load, nothing stops that user from leaving and finding another site. If you find that your site is abnormally slow, check out our tips to help improve your site speed or contact us today for help!
Does it have deadlinks?
You have probably found yourself on a website, and while browsing through links, you find yourself on a 404 error page. This is annoying, but it can also hurt your site’s SEO. When search engines crawl your site, they will see these errors even with hidden pages. There’s an easy way to fix this with 301 redirects. If you’re deleting a page or changing the URL, you should implement a 301 redirect. WordPress can do this through a plugin, and other sites typically have a designated section for the redirects. It would help if you always tried to redirect it to either the page replacing the old one or another one that would make sense for the user to land on in replace of it. If you’d like assistance with this, contact Boston Web Marketing!
Is it secure?
When browsing the web, some websites appear with “HTTPS,” and others show up with “HTTP.” Or you may see that some have the “lock” symbol in the far lefthand corner of the search box, and others may not. This is a sign that a website is secure. If your website has an unlocked lock, or “HTTP”, you’ll need to install an SSL certificate on the backend of the site. Google has made it clear that security is a huge ranking factor, rewarding sites for being “HTTPS” rather than “HTTP.” Once you resolve this issue, you may even notice a boost in your rankings.
Does it have duplicate content?
Did you know that plagiarism exists in the SEO world? We call it duplicate content. If you have similar content on multiple pages of your site, search engines will get confused if you copy and paste the same content for numerous different pages. Once they get confused, they’ll be unsure what page should rank highest. As a result, all pages with the same content may be rated lowest. You might even have a duplicate content issue without knowing it. For example, for ecommerce sites that have the same pages for different product sizes and colors, these will appear as duplicate pages to search engines unless specified otherwise. If you think you may have a duplicate content issue on your website, contact Boston Web Marketing today!
Contact Boston Web Marketing
At Boston Web Marketing, one of our specialties includes making sure that all our clients have websites that are efficient and easy to use for both users and search engines. We also understand that taking this task on as a business owner can be daunting – but it is critical to make sure your work doesn’t waste. So contact us today and let us do the work for you. Reach out at sales@getfoundquick.com or give us a call at 857-526-0096.